10 steps for a successful personalized web engagement strategy marketo

10 Steps

For a Successful Personalized
Web Engagement Strategy


Introduction
Real-time personalization (RTP) is a web engagement method used
by both B2B and B2C companies to create meaningful, real-time
interactions with targeted individuals through dynamically generated,
personalized communication across email, web, ads, and mobile.
Personalization allows you to use specific
information about buyers to make their online
experience more relevant. It offers companies
an opportunity to target customers more
effectively. As consumers research online
independently before making buying decisions,
businesses must create marketing strategies
to increase engagement with these potential
buyers throughout the buying process.

According to Marketo’s
research, customizing
mobile and web experiences
can lead to a 30% increase
in conversion rates and
up to a 270% increase in
content consumption.

Creating a more relevant and personalized
experience across the web helps catch the eye

of decision-makers and keeps them engaged
with your brand. Real-time Personalization
(RTP) drives one-to-one conversations with
prospects, developing trust over time, through
a combination of different tactics spanning
the web—from targeted ads, to mobile, to
personalized web content.
The more relevant the digital experience is, the
more effective it is in leading website visitors to
a conversion. According to Marketo’s research,
customizing mobile and web experiences can

lead to a 30% increase in conversion rates and
up to a 270% increase in content consumption.
According to Marketing Sherpa, 82% of
prospects find content made for their specific
industries more valuable, and 67% also value
content created for their specific positions.
RTP applications in your marketing
automation platform provide targeted content
based on individual visitors’ behaviors and
demographics. This allows you to adjust
images, calls-to-action, content, and more
based on unique buyer attributes.
Personalization enables you to market more
strategically and add value for customers.
This ebook guides you through the 10 steps
you should take in order to implement your
RTP campaigns now, so that you can begin
targeting individual visitors and moving them

down your sales funnel to become customers.

2


1

STEP

Take A Brief Primer:
The 3 W’s of Personalization
Let’s first take a step back. What is personalization and how can you use it?
Personalization applies to all aspects of the buyer journey. To simplify
things a bit, we like to explain personalization using our framework of
the 3 W’s: Who, What, and Where.
WHO

WHAT

Who will you personalize for? The who is
your target audience, which may differ slightly
depending on your customers.

What will you personalize? The possibilities
are nearly endless. Try a combination of
calls-to-action, images, product offers, and
content, which can include case studies, blog
posts, ebooks, videos, and more. Marketers
can personalize all of these assets based on
the audiences they are targeting.

B2B companies will focus on firmographics
like company name, vertical, and overall
revenue. The company’s position in the
customer decision journey, or buyer’s
cycle, will also play a role.
B2C companies will look at a customer’s
geographical location, interest in products,
price sensitivity, and purchase history.

WHERE
Finally, where can you personalize? You can
personalize your own website, email, and
online ads, as well as various features on
mobile. And you can even personalize offline!

3


Choose Two Use Cases
There are many use cases for real-time personalization, but the key
is to start out simple and choose two or three different use cases to
implement. By use cases we mean different examples of how RTP can
work for your organization.

Begin by asking yourself what you want to achieve by using RTP. For example, do you want to
promote a product line for a specific region, or are you looking to gain new customers in a specific
vertical? Identify a few goals and align your RTP use cases to those goals.
Here are some examples of how B2B and B2C companies might use RTP:

B2B
Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
By employing an ABM strategy, you can target
and personalize for specific companies or
industries with the assistance of your RTP
platform. For instance, you could focus on
one of the large target accounts you are
trying to go after. Or you could target based
on an industry that you are trying to market
into, such as financial services.
Persona-Based Marketing
Similar to ABM, marketers using a personabased approach to their marketing use their
RTP tools to target specific buyer personas.
For instance, they could focus on Chief
Financial Officers and highlight content
created specifically for this job title.

Location-Based Marketing
You could target your buyers based on
location. Say you are holding events in various
regions throughout the country. Why not
create specialized campaigns to tell those
buyers about your local events?
Behavior-Based Marketing
You can also target buyers based on
behaviors and lead profile data such as
score, product interest, and buying stage. If
someone downloaded several ebooks on a
particular topic, why not provide him more
content that fits with his interests?

STEP

2

IMPLEMENTING
ACCOUNT-BASED
MARKETING (ABM)
ABM is a strategic approach to lead
generation in which your time and
resources target a key group of
specific accounts in a given industry.
To begin your ABM campaign,
identify the accounts you wish to
target. You can accomplish this by
reviewing your CRM or marketing
automation history. Or, talk with sales
to identify key high-yield accounts.
You can then personalize content
and calls-to-actions for your top
“sales whale” accounts!
4


B2C
Location
Target consumers by geographical location.
A clothing brand could choose to highlight
its swimwear for users visiting from hotter
climates, like Florida. You can also personalize

based on shipping terms and pricing.
Demographics
Use demographics to target customers with RTP.
For instance, clothing stores can increase the
relevance of customer experiences by showing
women’s clothing when a woman visits the site,
or men’s clothing when a man visits.
Behavior
If a consumer has visited your website
previously and reviewed or purchased specific
products, suggest similar products or content
the next time he lands on your home page.
You can also target based on price sensitivity
and highlight more cost-effective items.
Buyer Persona and History
In many cases, the buyer visiting your site has
had previous interactions with your brand and is
known to you. The information you already have
on a specific buyer, such as previous purchases
or interests and profile or customer type, can be
used to further customize and optimize her buying
experience with more relevant offers. For instance,
a customer that has shown previous interests in a
golf vacation will be presented with content and
offers on your latest golf package, or a customer
that bought a specific car model can be offered a
relevant upgrade or additional equipment to add.

The key here is to start small and think big! You don’t
need to start out by choosing 10 different use cases.

Instead, choose two that are either easier for you to
create or have more impact on your business.
Then, get moving!
5


3

STEP

Take Your Use Cases
One Step Further
Once you have chosen two or three use cases, go deeper by
outlining the specifics of the strategy. For example, if you
choose account-based marketing, determine which companies
you want to focus on.
Similarly, if you decide to personalize by location, consider
which regions make sense for your business.
Here are some ideas:
Go for Easy Wins
Target regions where your company already
performs well and try to increase business
in these areas.
Strategic Targeting
Pinpoint regions where you hope to expand
your business.

Leverage Existing Content
Start with audiences for which you already
have good content and offers.

Consider Local Events
Do you have a conference coming up in
the Northeast? Use RTP to target visitors
from this region and advertise the event
more effectively.

6


Segment and Gather Initial Analytics
After you’ve given more thought to your use cases, it’s time to start
putting a basic strategy together. The next step is to set up metrics
and segment your use cases so you can create a benchmark before
you actually start your RTP campaigns.

ESTABLISH ANALYTICS

CREATE SEGMENTS

By setting up analytics immediately, you can see
where your campaigns are now and where they
will be in the future. It will also help validate
the audience choices you made by showing
you just how many prospects/buyers actually
exist in each segment. It’s important to set your
measurements up quickly so you can establish
baseline metrics and begin testing. Some RTP
platforms, like Marketo’s, integrate with Google
Analytics to allow you to see how specific
segments interact with your website. Combine

Google Analytics and marketing automation
to obtain a full-funnel tracking experience.

Once you set up analytics, take note of how
your chosen groups currently perform. This
information helps you further segment your
markets for more effective nurturing, which
refers to the process of using strategic
messaging and content to guide buyers
toward conversion over time. Here is some
of the information you might need:

Once you set up analytics,
take note of how your chosen
groups currently perform.

4
STEP

Number of Visitors
How many visitors from each segment
and verticals visit the site today? Be sure to
benchmark before and after you begin RTP.
Demographics and Behavior
Which types of people come into the system?
What do they do once they arrive on your site?
Is there specific content they consume?
Engagement
Which audiences are and aren’t engaging
with you at the moment?

7


5

STEP

Leverage Existing Content
A successful RTP campaign requires content. To create a fully
personalized experience, include customized calls-to-action for
each segment that lead to more personalized content. For instance,
a CTA to download an ebook should be personalized based on the site
visitor, and the ebook itself should be consistent with the CTA.

It may sound daunting to create the amount of
customized content needed to implement RTP,
but there are strategies you can employ to do
more with less. To make your existing content
go further, you can re-create sections to make
them more relevant to specific industries or
demographics. The fact is that most of the
content you need for personalization already
exists! Think about all of those ebooks, case

studies, and testimonials you have. Can you use
those for different segments? Can you change
a few minor details in order to be relevant?
Employing a content recommendation engine
helps you to provide a seamless, relevant

experience while at the same time allowing
you to more effectively use the content you
already have.

To make your existing content go further, you can re-create
sections to make them more relevant to specific industries
or demographics.
8


PREDICTIVE CONTENT
RECOMMENDATION ENGINE
Marketo’s content discovery and
recommendation engine (CRE) combines
the speed of real-time targeting and
personalization with the insights of
machine learning and predictive analytics.
It is designed to identify visitor profile and
behavior patterns and automatically
discover and recommend the most
appropriate content for each interaction.
The content discovery engine automatically
identifies all of the content assets on your
site—blogs, videos, case studies, ebooks and
more—eliminating the need for a manual
inventory project. This engine shows you all
the “ammunition” you have, including the
consumption performance of each content
piece. The second part of the CRE leverages
machine learning to recommend the right

content, to the right visitor, at the right time.
Essentially, the platform discovers and maps
your content assets, learns which content works
best for specific users, and uses this information
to recommend the most relevant content to

visitors and leads. This tool supports your RTP
campaigns by providing valuable content in
real-time to drive prospects down the sales
funnel. You will still run your specific, targeted
campaigns, but the CRE will also be running in
the background to supplement with additional
content in order to increase consumption.
Think about it this way: while a CMO at
a financial services company might be
underwhelmed by a general marketing
whitepaper, she might be more likely to take
a look at a marketing whitepaper written
with her industry in mind. The CRE system
also takes previous behavior into account to
deliver new results with each new visit, slowly
drawing the lead down the sales funnel. So
in this example, after the CMO downloads a
whitepaper, she may be presented with a new
content asset, such as a different targeted
whitepaper or webinar. Content suggestions
allow you to dramatically increase the value
of RTP with little effort.

9

REPURPOSE CONTENT
To maximize the potential of your personalized
campaigns, you may have to create new
content, but you may also be able to
repurpose some of the assets you already
have. Take a look at the relevant content
you’ve already developed and see if you can
revise the following to make it targeted to
your specific groups:
Titles
Revise titles as necessary to better match
your target readers.
CTAs
Edit the call-to-action to reflect the
targeted segment.
Statistics and Copy
Look for industry-specific studies or other
data unique to each segment.
Maximize Content
Slice and dice the content you have into
smaller assets, like cheat sheets, short
ebooks, or even blog posts.

10


Use Customer Journey Maps

6

STEP

The goal of RTP is to drive buyers down the sales funnel using
personalized content and website experiences. To accomplish this
effectively, outline which content you will deliver during each stage
of the customer journey.

Map out each customer journey.
If you are a B2B marketer, create a graph that looks like this:

CAMPAIGN PROGRAM MATRIX
EXAMPLE: VERTICAL CUSTOMER JOURNEY: COMPANY X
Segment / Asset
Type

Fortune 500
Companies

Educational
Industry

Named Account
Lists

Awareness

Interest

Evaluation

Commitment

State of the
Modern Meeting

Facebook

How Company X
Helps You

Company X
Advanced Solutions

Live Demo

User Group

Cloud-based
Video Conferencing

Company X
User Summit

Whitepaper

Event / Conference

Company X

Mandate and
Promise

Join Our
Top Executives

Infographic

Learning with
Company X
Use Case

Case Study

Wharton University
Testimonial

Company X
Demo Center

Wharton
Connects Students

Overview Video

Videocast

Advanced Services

Networking

Meeting

11


Outline your chosen groups—whether you’re targeting separate regions,
demographics, or verticals—and select content for each stage of the
buyer’s journey.
For B2B this will include sections for awareness, interest, evaluation, and
commitment. For B2C, include three sections: awareness, consideration,
and decision. Identify content assets for each phase.
You might start with an infographic or short video for the top-of-the-funnel,
move on to a testimonial or case study for mid-funnel, and finish with a
demo or data sheet for the bottom of the funnel.

A graph for consumers might look like this:

CAMPAIGN PROGRAM MATRIX
EXAMPLE: CONSUMER PRODUCT
Target Segments

Product Interest A

Awareness

Product Highlights
Infographic

Interest

Product A Versus
the Others
Video Comparison

Decision
Last Minute
Special Offers
Localized Delivery
and Shipping Details
Shipping Policy

Product Interest B

Product Introduction
Introduction Video

Happy Customer
Testimonial

How Product B Won
International Awards
Press Release

12


Engage in Web Nurturing
What exactly is web nurturing? It’s similar to the concept of lead
nurturing, which you can accomplish through your marketing
automation platform, except it takes place across the web.

Use a tool like Marketo’s Ad Bridge to draw
visitors back to your site with personalized
remarketing ads and nurture unique site
visitors across a variety of channels. Ad
Bridge connects Marketo’s rich behavioral
data with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and
other advertising platforms so that marketers
can target the right potential customers with
meaningful, relevant ads. Because Marketo
tracks how customers engage with you across a
wide variety of channels, including email, social,
web, and more, Marketo uniquely understands
the past behaviors of your most promising
prospects and uses this information to keep
your brand top-of-mind as they surf the web.
As an example of web nurturing, consider this:
a customer from the healthcare industry comes
to your website. She sees a healthcare-specific
video and a healthcare-specific ebook. She
watches the video and leaves your site. She
then logs onto Facebook where she might

then see an ad for the ebook you offered her
on the site. She doesn’t download it there,
but instead goes to LinkedIn where she sees
the advertisement again and decides to take
action and download. Now you are nurturing
your customers across the web, rather than
using email alone.
Successful nurturing relies on as many

touch-points and interactions as possible, so
that your buyers have more chances to read
their content and educate themselves at their
own pace. Adding web and ad interactions to
existing email nurturing increases the number
of potential interactions and can increase the
effectiveness of your nurturing programs.

STEP

7

COMBINE WITH
EMAIL NURTURE
Since nurturing is multi-channel,
make sure to combine your web
nurturing with your email nurturing
activity. Email continues to be
one of the most successful ways
to keep in touch with engaged
buyers. By aligning your email and
web nurture, you can ensure that
you aren’t duplicating content
and that all of your channels are
speaking to one another.

13


8

STEP

Power Your Ads With Data to Target
As we have said, successful personalization doesn’t just involve your
website. It also involves other channels, such as online ads.
Online ads are a great way to drive first-time visitors back to your site
and raise awareness for your brand over time. Let’s dive deeper into
how you can use online ads.
SHOW THE RIGHT ADS TO THE RIGHT AUDIENCE
By using a tool like Marketo’s Ad Bridge, you can deliver the perfect ads to the right prospects across
numerous channels. Ad Bridge infuses behavioral, firmographic, and persona-related data into
Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and other platforms to target customers with ads more effectively.
You can even target relevant buyers or prospects with personalized messaging based on their
engagement levels, demographics, or other outlined features of your campaign. Here
are some things you can do with Ad Bridge:
Personalized Remarketing Ads
Don’t just show ads: personalize them.
Target the most users based on who they are and what they do, or suggest new content
while they browse elsewhere so you can bring them back in your site.
Optimized Pay-Per-Click
Connect offline conversion data to Google AdWords so you can optimize your keyword bidding
around the search terms that bring you paying customers.
Ads are more likely to convert when the content is relevant to viewers. Implementing personalized
ads in addition to your RTP will increase the overall value and effectiveness of your strategy. This
ensures you only target the right audience and show them relevant ads.

14
14

A/B Test
As with any campaign, it’s important to implement A/B testing to
determine what worked well and what could be improved with the
next campaign. Here’s how you go about it:
SET UP MULTIPLE CAMPAIGNS
There are several components to any campaign, and it’s possible to run A/B tests for all of
them. The more you A/B test, the better insight you have for the next campaign. Create more
than one campaign for each segment, so you have a basis for comparison. Each campaign
might include different CTAs, different content for each stage of the buyer journey, and even
unique ad targeting.

9

STEP

METRICS TO REVIEW
Here are some metrics to consider when reviewing campaign performance:
Ad Conversions
Look at ad click-through and conversion rates to gauge the success of your ad placements.
Web Engagement
How well did personalized CTAs and content drive engagement? Did visitors engage with the
content? Did anonymous visitors turn into leads in your database? People who view personalized
content typically stay longer on your site, read more pages, and convert at a higher rate than average.
Sales Feedback
Ask the sales team about the quality of the leads passed over from your RTP campaign.
Is there a possibility sales will close deals with any of them?

SEE WHAT WORKED BEST
Use the information gleaned from your A/B test and keep this data in mind for the next RTP

campaign you take on. Utilize A/B testing with each campaign so you continue to hone and
improve your campaigns over time.
15


Show the Right Reports to Sales
At some point, you’ll need to turn over these accounts to the
sales team (if you have one) to help you turn leads into closed
sales. To begin this transition, start putting together reports
from your RTP campaign.

Create reports on:
Key Organizations From Sales Territories
Once the campaign has been up and running, are certain organizations showing
more interest in your company than others? Are these organizations a good fit
for your company?

10

STEP

Key Leads Coming From Sales Territories
Are there specific decision-makers you’ve located in sales territories?
Be sure to highlight these as well as their level of engagement.
Specific Reports on Mobile Data
Produce reports on how many leads accessed your materials using
mobile devices. This information is valuable for sales reps and is also a key
consideration for future campaigns.

16

Conclusion
Real-time personalization software gives you the opportunity to provide
more relevant experiences to incoming buyers. In a one-to-one marketing
world, you are more likely to win over prospects with experiences
targeted to their specific needs. Each visitor has a unique perspective
and use for your products and services. A one-size-fits-all approach is
no longer effective in today’s marketing environment.
Personalization has made its way into many campaigns, and it’s time
to take the next step and personalize every part of the customer
journey. In addition to segmenting email campaigns, you need to
implement the same processes for website copy and ad targeting to
create memorable and relevant experiences for prospects.
By leading these visitors through the buyer’s cycle with targeted
content and experiences, you are more likely to turn these contacts
into qualified leads. In a digital marketing landscape that is
increasingly competitive, hyper-relevant and timely content across
multiple channels is a great way for your company to differentiate
itself from competitors and prove to customers that you have the right
products and services for them.

17


Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO) provides the leading marketing software
for companies of all sizes to build and sustain engaging customer
relationships. Spanning today’s digital, social, mobile and offline
channels, Marketo’s® customer engagement platform powers a set of
breakthrough applications to help marketers tackle all aspects of digital

marketing from the planning and orchestration of marketing activities
to the delivery of personalized interactions that can be optimized in
real-time. Marketo’s applications are known for their ease-of-use,
and are complemented by the Marketing Nation™, a thriving network
of more than 250 third-party solutions through our LaunchPoint™
ecosystem and over 50,000 marketers who share and learn from
each other to grow their collective marketing expertise. The result
for modern marketers is unprecedented agility and superior results.
Headquartered in San Mateo, CA with offices in Europe, Australia
and a joint-venture in Japan, Marketo serves as a strategic marketing
partner to more than 3,000 large enterprises and fast-growing small
companies across a wide variety of industries. For more information,
visit marketo.com.

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